NAIROBI, Kenya — There’s a newcomer on the Nairobi restaurant scene: the White Waiter. The other night, Martin Mileveski, a smiley young man from Macedonia, leaned over a table of three immaculately dressed Kenyan women and delicately poured out the Captain Morgan rum. “Anything else I can get you ladies?” They smiled and he drifted away. “That’s kind of cool,” said one of the women, Lawrencia Namulanda. “A mzungu,” or foreigner. Kenyans don’t usually see working-class mzungus. Melanin-challenged visitors and residents tend to be professionals, diplomats, United Nations types or safarigoers — people with means. Tell Kenyans that there are white people who sleep in rags on the sidewalks of America and most shake their heads and laugh in disbelief. But Kenya’s business landscape is changing at dizzying speed. International franchises, some with imported labor, are racing to set up shop here — Subway, Domino’s, Cold Stone Creamery and other big worldwide brands that had stayed away from this region but now want a piece of East Africa’s fast-growing pie. “We did essentially zero marketing, and it didn’t matter,” said CJ Bak, the developing agent for Subway in Kenya, with three stores currently and plans for 20. On good days, Mr. Bak said, each location can get 500 customers. The biggest seller? The chicken teriyaki sub. Nothing, though, may signify that Kenya has arrived more than the sight of a white man with a bead of sweat trickling down his temple, hustling trays of drinks and sweeping up steak scraps with the edge of his hand. That’s what you see at Caramel, a dark, cozy and quite expensive new restaurant with a humidor, a private lounge with high-backed leather chairs straight out of the Yale Club, $450 dollar shots of Louis XIII de Rémy Martin Cognac (an eye-popping extravagance that made the local papers) and outside labor. nytimes/2014/10/17/world/nairobis-latest-novelty-high-end-mac-and-cheese-served-by-whites.html?_r=0
Posted on: Sat, 18 Oct 2014 13:08:31 +0000
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